


Investiture

by crossingwinter



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Judaism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-08-28 15:14:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16725834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: In which Ben goes to daven for his father’s yahrtzeit and manages to prove to himself once again that he is both a terrible person and a terrible Jew.Oh and he sort of falls in love.





	Investiture

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MissCoppelia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissCoppelia/gifts).



_ Please, Ben.  It would mean so much to him. _

Ben stares at the text for a long time.  He doesn’t want to admit that it’s the truth.  He doesn’t want to admit that it’s even close to the truth.

He got his agnosticism from his dad.  He got the rye in the back of shul on shabbas—because how else are you going to sit through the service?—from his dad.  He got the sense of irony from his dad.

Which is why he sighs, and goes to his closet and finds the tallis he’d gotten when his dad had died and tucks it into a shoulder bag before dressing in something approximating nice because yes, yes it would mean something to his dad if he went to shul for his yahrtzeit.  

 

-

 

Ben shows up at the end of shacharit, right as they’re preparing to take the Torah out of the ark.  He pulls his flask out of his pocket and takes a sip—are you supposed to say something over rye? It’s not wine.  It’s also not bread. But it’s made of breadstuff. He’s sure some rabbi somewhere could tell him. Hell, there’s probably a whole Talmud tractate on it—before donning his tallis and grabbing one of the spare kippot from the basket by the doorway into the shul and going into the sanctuary.  (His agnosticism he got from his dad; more technical knowledge than anyone should ever have about Judaism had been crammed into his head by his Uncle Luke. But that was long before they stopped talking.)

He spies his mom sitting near the front, dressed in a light sweater and a dark dress and he makes his way towards her.

“You came,” she says looking up at him before getting to her feet to hug him.  

“Yeah,” he says.

He can see from the way her eyes resist rolling that she caught the whiff of rye on his breath but her fingers are already trailing over the weaving of the tallis and he knows she knows it.  Of course she does. She’d dragged his father to shul for a good thirty years. She’d seen him wearing it every day.

They sit down only to be bade, “Please rise while we open the ark,” by a voice that Ben’s never heard before and he turns to see—

She’s standing at the bimah, clearly preparing to sing as his uncle and some elderly member of the community both draw open the curtains of the ark and bring the Torah out but Ben’s mind is full of two things:

The first is that he hadn’t realized that Cantor Antilles had retired.

The second is that he’s never seen anyone quite so pretty in his life.

And then she opens her mouth and starts to sing and it all goes downhill from there.

 

-

 

Ben wouldn’t call himself a good Jew.  He hasn’t been to shul regularly in years—and isn’t even a High Holy Days Jew.  He doesn’t keep kosher, he doesn’t light candles, he doesn’t even spend time with other Jews.  The most Jewish he’s felt in years is sitting right here, in his uncle’s shul next to his mother, wishing he could take another shot of rye right where he’s sitting because goddamn if this woman doesn’t have the most beautiful voice he’s ever heard in his life.

Like a good step up from Cantor Antilles.

Who hadn’t been  _ bad _ he’d just been very…cantorial.

She uses minimal vibrato, and to his complete and utter _shock_ gets the entire congregation to join in on romemu which he doesn’t think anyone has ever managed ever in the history of the Jews.

“Who’s that?” he asks his mom, who is singing along—quietly, she can’t sing loud anymore without breaking out into a smoker’s cough—his eyes on the new cantor.

“That’s Rey.”

“Rey?”

“She’s the cantorial intern.”

Cantorial intern.

So she won’t be here forever, unless his uncle can convince her to stay.

And she looks at him and he doesn’t think he’ll ever fully recover from that.

 

-

 

All the way from the bimah, he can see the streaks of gold in her hazel eyes that seem to flash brighter when they land on him.

He can see the way that the corner of her lips lift at the sight of him.

That never happens.

 

-

 

Ben never pays attention during Torah service.  He never has. He’d barely been able to pay attention to the Torah service during his own Bar Mitzvah when he’d been the one  _ giving _ the Torah service, his voice cracking like a dropped carton of eggs.  And he  _ certainly _ doesn’t pay attention to the Torah service right now.

Not when Rey is sitting there in one of the seats at the edge of the bimah, her head cocked as she follows along with the Torah reading in the print edition.  She’s got lovely hands. And a beautifully intent look on her face. And her tallis is really nice—not tacky the way modern ones can be so frequently. It’s subtle.  It’s classy. 

“You’re staring,” his mother hisses.  Likely because he has never once in his life stared at a cantor.

And he doesn’t stop.

“Just like your father,” she mutters and he thinks he hears fondness in there.

He should have noticed the warning shot across his nose.

But he’s too busy staring at Rey.

 

-

 

“So are you going to talk to her?” his mother asks him when they’ve gone into the community room for oneg.  

“Why would I do that?” Ben asks.

“Because you couldn’t stop staring at her.”

“And fuck up a perfectly good thing?  You’ve got high expectations of me, mom.”

“Oh, I know better than to have expectations of you after all these years.”

It’s quite the sting, but he does deserve that one.

“Well, are you coming for shabbas lunch?”

“Is Uncle Luke going to be there?”

“It’s your father’s yahrtzeit, of course Luke’s coming.”

He takes a deep breath.  Yes, it’s his father’s yahrtzeit.   _ Do it, kid.  Suck it up for your old man.  Or at least to keep your mom from getting upset.   _ He takes off his tallis and folds it carefully before putting it in his tote, then takes out his flask and takes a long sip from it.  His mother rolls his eyes.

“Yeah,” he says.  “Yeah, I’m coming.”

“Good.  So is Rey.  You’ll have to talk to her then.”

“I’ve been ambushed.”  He should have seen it coming.  His mother’s wilier than anyone he’s ever met.  He really should have seen that one coming.

“You have.  I’ve never seen you stare at a girl like that before and I do want grandchildren before I die.”

“Of course.  Grandchildren.  Because my happiness has never been the—”

“I started with your happiness, asking if you were going to talk to her, and then you made it quite clear that that wasn’t worth my time but I don’t take defeat that easily and never once have.”

Ben takes another sip from his flask and hopes that he’s not going to regret this.

The trouble is: he already knows he will.

 

-

 

Because—he curses himself, a little tipsily, as he gets to his mother’s house and helps her take food out of the fridge—if it’s just him and mom and Rey and Uncle Luke, the only thing that  _ can _ happen is him talking to her.  What the fuck else is supposed to happen?  He hasn’t talked to Uncle Luke in seven years and that’s sure as fuck not going to change just because it’s his dad’s yahrtzeit.  His dad would get that, if his dad knew the full story.

So that leaves his mom—who he is damn well sure isn’t going to be his ally in this—and Rey.

He goes to the sink and fills up the biggest glass of water he can find.  Because he may be his father’s son, but he’s not going to talk to Rey while aware that he’s tipsy.  Nope. He is not.

He catches his mother grinning at him.

“Shut up,” he mutters and her grin grows positively catlike.

 

-

 

He hears them come in, hears his mother give her brother a good long hug, hears her say, “Ben’s here,” hears the silence that follows from that.

“He is?”

“Yes.”

“Who’s Ben?”

He hadn’t heard Rey’s speaking voice before, wouldn’t have been able to guess that she has an  _ English Accent _ from her singing and it’s all he can do resisting groaning and going for his flask though he’d just had water because maybe sobriety had been a mistake.

“Ben’s my son.”

“The tall one from services?”

“Yes.”

Oh his mother’s going to make this that much harder, he can hear the way her voice curls around that word like the fucking Cheshire Cat knowing everything.  

“Leia,” he hears his uncle say softly, and whatever else comes through is too quiet for him to hear, likely on purpose.

“Hello.”  Ben practically jumps out of his seat as Rey comes into the living room, holding her hand out to him with a smile.  “It’s so lovely to meet you. I’m Rey.”

He notices more things now that they’re close together—like how she’s the perfect height to tuck under his chin, like how she has perfectly straight white teeth that fill out the most genuine smile he’s ever seen anyone have ever, like how her hair is soft and brown and exactly the same shade as his mother’s.

“Ben,” he squeaks out, then clears his throat so it comes out a little deeper when he repeats his name.  “Ben.” He takes her hand.

And it’s like a fucking firework goes off in his nervous system.

 

-

 

He sees his future in her eyes for the point-six seconds that their hands are connected.

He sees her under a chuppah, he sees her throwing popcorn at him because she thinks his movie choices are dumb, he sees himself wrapping his coat around her because it’s really fucking cold and she hadn’t worn enough layers, he sees her getting into heated debates with his uncle about him, he sees her lying asleep on his chest while he strokes her hair unclear on how he lucked the fuck into this, he sees her smiling smiling smiling like he’s the only person in the universe to her.

Ok maybe their hands are connected for more than point-six seconds.

Maybe they’re connected for a lot longer than that.

 

-

 

She doesn’t seem to want to let go of his hand.

Which is a good thing because otherwise it’d be really awkward how he doesn’t want to let go of hers.

 

-

 

“I haven’t seen you in shul before,” she says at last.  “Are you in from out of town?”

“No,” he says.  “I’m just a terrible Jew.”

“I doubt that,” she says. 

And from her lips he believes it.

 

-

 

Which is stupid, of course. 

Ben knows—has known his whole life, learned it from his dad—that there’s more to being Jewish than going to shul.  It’s the whole problem: that it’s not just a religion it’s a family, it’s a community, it’s a history. But he’s not great at the religion part, and only barely passable at the family part.  He can fake it till he makes it with the history.

But god if Rey doesn’t make him believe he could be good at all of it.

 

-

 

“How long have you been at Beth El?”

“Finishing up my first year,” she replied.

Somehow they’d made it to the lunch table.  They’d said Kiddush, they’d begun eating, Ben hadn’t said a word to his Uncle, but it was all ok because he and Rey—they could be the only ones in the room.  (Somewhere—immediately to his left, more specifically—he is sure, his mother is delighted.)

“And how long’s your contract for?”

“Two, but I’m hopeful they’ll hire me on full time.  If they can get the funding.”

Ben will give half his salary to the shul if it means they have the funding.  

 

-

 

His uncle’s departed, his mother has absented herself in the name of a shabbas afternoon nap, but Ben and Rey are sitting on the couch just talking.  Talking about his dad—who died and it was his fault, no, don’t say anything, it was his fault—about his job, about why he hadn’t said a thing to his uncle.  They talk about her parents—how they’d abandoned her, it wasn’t her fault she has to remind herself of that all the time, no she didn’t deserve it of course she didn’t deserve it—about her friends, about how despite her friends she sometimes just feels so alone.

“You’re not alone,” he tells her before his brain catches up to his lips and tells him that’s a dumb thing to say.

“Neither are you,” she tells him right back and his mouth goes so dry.  It sounds like a vow, it sounds like a promise and when he murmurs, “Rey,” it’s with the reverence of a prayer.

 

-

 

They don’t kiss farewell but they do exchange numbers, which Ben knows will be more than enough to keep his mother fortified for about nine years.

He regrets it immediately.

_ I should have kissed you goodbye,  _ he texts her when he’s back at his apartment, all by himself again.

He doesn’t expect her to reply right away, but she’d clearly meant that  _ neither are you _ and his phone dings and he reads,  _ Me too.  Dinner?  _ on his lock screen.

And he smiles.

And sends her the address of a Chinese place.   _ Seven? _

_ I’ll be there. _

  
  



End file.
